CFIA cutting back on meat inspections in Northern Alberta: document

Health Minister Rona Ambrose’s office is continuing to insist that reports of Canadian Food Inspection Agency cuts to the number of meat inspections in Northern Alberta are “irresponsible and inaccurate” despite the fact internal documents obtained by iPolitics show the agency is doing just that.

The issue was brought to public attention on Tuesday in a news conference by the Agriculture Union, which represents food inspection workers and had obtained edited versions of the same documents iPolitics has since obtained in unedited form.

The internal documents show the CFIA has conceded it “is not able to complete work as per program design” when it comes to meat hygiene inspections in Northern Alberta because of tight finances and a shortfall of six inspectors.

As a result, the agency has “reduced daily presence in registered processing establishments that are not eligible to export to the USA,” a decision that affects 66 per cent of the region’s processing plants.

When asked about the documents’ contents and the fact the cuts appear to directly contravene the findings of both the Maple Leaf and XL foods investigation, a spokesperson for Ambrose referred iPolitics to the minister’s statement in QP on Wednesday.

“The union’s portrayal of this issue is inaccurate and it is irresponsible. Food safety is number one to CFIA,” Ambrose told the House on Wednesday. Canada’s food safety system, she insisted, remains one of the best in the world.

That statement was made in response to questions about the union’s claims on Tuesday, which were based on heavily redacted documents obtained under access to information.

The questions put to the minister Thursday were about the contents of the complete, non-redacted internal documents obtained by iPolitics, which state that the agency has made cuts to domestic meat inspections in Northern Alberta processing plants.

If CFIA doesn’t get more staff or “program design alteration”, the documents say, these reductions likely will have to continue into 2015/2016.

The documents’ contents, Agriculture Union President Bob Kingston said in an interview, do not come as a surprise given they echo what the food inspector’s union told reporters in Edmonton, Tuesday.

Asked about the minister’s comments on the accuracy of the union’s complaints, Kingston described them as “gibberish.” The agency, he said, needs to go public about its financial and labour constraints.

The documents obtained by iPolitics show that as of January 5, domestic plants that were inspected once a day are now being inspected every second day; those plants are going without a visit from an inspector two days a week. Meanwhile, plants that previously received inspections twice a day are seeing their inspections cut back to once a day.

“Only 1 shift will have inspection coverage over the 24-hour period,” the document states, a change that affects 40 per cent of the region’s domestic meat processing plants.

Daily inspections, the document notes, remain in place for plants exporting to the United States.

The cutbacks are also affecting low-risk tasks. “With reduced inspectors CVS (Compliance Verification System) tasks must be reduced,” the memo notes. Those cutbacks apply to both plants that service domestic markets and export markets.

Those tasks include a reduction in pre-operation inspection for both ready-to-eat and raw products, equipment maintenance and calibration, ventilation and sanitation, along with waste and inedible material disposal.

Before January 5, CFIA inspectors were expected to conduct pre-operation reviews for ready-to-eat products twice a month, while raw products received pre-operation inspections once a month. Under the new guidelines, the documents state, those inspections have dropped to once a month and six times a year, respectively.

General sanitation inspections — which include looking for lingering contamination — have dropped from once a month for ready-to-eat products to six times a year. Sanitation inspections for raw products have dropped slightly, from four times a year to three times a year.

Lingering contamination was linked to the deadly 2008 outbreak of listeriosis at a Maple Leaf processing plant that killed 22 people and sickened many more. The issue was raised again during the investigation into the 2012 XL beef crisis, which triggered the largest meat recall in Canadian history.

10 comments on “CFIA cutting back on meat inspections in Northern Alberta: document”

Anyone who thinks that our meet is safe in Canada should google letter from the health minister to XLFoods in Alberta. This letter instructs XL to ensure that the food going to Japan unlike our food in Canada is thoroughly inspected because they will return the food if it is substandard.